Last Updated: Monday, October 26, 2009CBC News

An independent observer from the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP and a member of the force's office of investigative standards and practices were in Nanaimo, B.C., on the weekend in the aftermath of a fatal shooting by police of a purported white supremacist.

The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit says its officers continue their investigation into the death Friday of 48-year-old Jeffrey Hughes.

Hughes was fatally shot following a standoff with RCMP officers responding to a noise complaint. He was shot after he came out with what police say appeared to be a weapon.

An inspector from the Victoria Police Department is also monitoring the investigation.

Hughes was a member of a white supremacist group called Northwest Front Canada, according to the Vancouver Sun.

Some online postings from related organizations accused the police of killing Hughes because of his political affiliations, a charge denied by police.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Peter Thiessen said the man's death was "no execution and when all the facts are made public it will become apparent what happened."

Last month, the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police asked the province to create an independent unit to investigate deaths involving police and serious allegations against officers, in order to ensure public confidence in such investigations.

The province did not commit to creating such a unit.

With files from The Canadian PressThose, "online postings from related organizations" accusing the police of a politically motivated assassination refer primarily, though not exclusively, to Stormfront where there is not one, but two threads concerning the incident. Some of the posters of Stormfront are referring to the shooting of an, "act of war":

Perhaps this is as good a time as any to remind our readers, and any Alberta law enforcement officer, that Bill Noble (Leto Atreides II) is in violation of the terms of his release and has been since the day he was released from prison.

The racists on Stormfront are painting Hughes as a mild, passive and non-violent individual. And certainly not someone who had a firearm. OdinPatrick, the moderator of the Canadian forum on Stormfront and who had been with Hughes on October 16, makes the following claim when he was still uncertain that it was Hughes who had been shot:

I hope you have your information wrong NHV, and it was some indian they shot. If it's Jeff, then I just lost a friend and my condolences to his family. Last time I talked to him he was just telling me he lives in a Ghetto, and that his building is full of indians and blacks and they play their music all night long. I don't understand this, he doesn't have any guns, and doesn't even carry a knife or pepper spray, and when I was in Vancouver, he discouraged me from carrying "dog/bear/pepper" spray because he doesn't believe in using weapons for defence or something like that. Obviously the RCMP female officer who shot him believes in weapons, it sounds like he may slapped her and he was shot 10 times for that offence.

However, in another news article concerning Mr. Hughes, a neighbour claimed that he did possess weapons:

She did see a Nazi flag on his apartment wall and several guns. She didn't take his neo-Nazi interests seriously and wasn't concerned about in his guns.
The same woman made the following statement concerning the shooting itself:

David had no doubt that the officer who shot Hughes had no choice.

"They couldn't stop Jeff, he went off his rocker. This is just this one night. It was an ongoing thing for months here."

Now this woman isn't someone with a grudge against Hughes. In fact it appears she believed he was harmless, and even liked him in spite of his neo-Nazi beliefs which she claims he never tried to force on her. That being said she also believes, based upon how Mr. Hughes was acting, that the shooting was justified. She's not happy about Hughes' death and has no agenda that she's trying to promote unlike the folks on Stormfront or, for that matter, us.

That there needs to be a police statement about this incident is a given. We hope for a statement in the coming days. Such a statement will not mollify the extremists who have already made up their own minds concerning the shooting of Jeff Hughes, though Bill Noble does suggest that allowing the people who have already prejudged the police as political murderers to take over the investigation:

We're not entirely certain if Noble was being serious here.

Again, violating terms of his release for almost two years now. We're just say'n.....

8 comments:

Very good coverage. Regarding Bill Noble...one of the issues may be the scope of the conditions that were imposed on him when his term of sentence concluded. I'm sure there are folks on this thread who know more about the law than I do, but I wonder if the conditions regarding use of the internet, etc were in effect only as long as he was a resident of BC. I know it sounds crazy, but I also know that warrants, for example, can be cross-Canada or limited to a particular province. Perhaps someone could check that out?

Everybody should be asking the question "did he have a firearm in his hands" and if not "how does an un-armed person, regardless of political beliefs get shot 10 times at his front door". I would expect answers to those questions no matter who was the person killed.

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At age 16, Elisa Hategan was an alienated runaway who became recruited into Canada's most powerful white supremacist movement, the Heritage Front. She was groomed by top leaders to become a rising star of the extremist far-right movement. An errand girl for notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, she was a witness to the illicit activities of an undercover CSIS agent and co-founder of the Heritage Front. At age 18, she turned against the group and spied on them for several months before testifying in court and going into hiding.